Almost every article about Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park starts with a picture of the same two formations, so why break tradition. Unfortunately, we arrived late in the afternoon with only a little light left to take a few pictures and the nearest available hotel room was in Mexican Hat, Utah. (Pictures are from a trip taken several years ago.)
Monument Valley (Tse Bil' Ndzisgaii, meaning Valley of the Rocks in Navajo) is a collection of large sandstone buttes on the Navajo Nation Reservation that have been featured in many Western movies. Some of the buttes are about 1,000 feet tall.
To many people, they often think of Monument Valley when they think of the American West. The Navajo like to say that the Park looks today like it did 30 years ago, which is what it looked like 300 years ago, which is what it looked like 3,000 years ago. In other words, there is not a lot of change in the Park.
The vivid red color in the buttes comes from iron oxide and the darker blue-gray rocks get their color from manganese oxide. There are also mineable deposits of uranium, vanadium and copper in the soils.
An access fee is charged to drive the 17-mile dirt loop road in your private vehicle, but other parts of the Park are accessible only by guided tour. Tourist literature states that Monument Valley is "Big Rocks, Big Sky, and...nope. That's it."
No comments:
Post a Comment